n) THE

The beginning of the Christian Church is described in the
first chapter of Acts: "Then returned they unto Jerusalem
from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a sabbath
day's journey. And when they were come in, they went up into
an upper room . . . the number of names together were about
an hundred and twenty." To the Romans this at first looked
like just another Jewish heresy. As such it did not concern
them unduly. Knowing none of these things, they regarded
the persecution of Christians by Jews in Judaea as regrettable
but normal among Jews: the stoning of a Stephen probably
made little impression on the cynical Roman, and the attitude
of Gallio at Corinth is typical. However, once the religion
began to make headway among the Gentiles, the Roman
government had to give it closer attention; and the spread of
Christianity among the Gentiles, although at first frowned upon
by a Judaizing party within the Church itself, was rapid, thanks
largely to the missionary zeal of St. Paul. Paul's Epistle to
the Romans implies that within a quarter of a century of Christ's
crucifixion there was a fairly large Christian community in
Rome itself. After the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 the
new religion made even greater headway among the Gentiles,
and Jewish Christianity was either absorbed into the Gentile
churches or fell away in curious heresies.